Gary Dexter
I bought Les Dawson's Secret Notebooks (JR Books, £15.99) to see if it could furnish an explanation of why Les wrote A Time Before Genesis, the only serious fiction he ever produced, a disturbing novel of alien conspiracy, sexual mutilation and global apocalypse. Unfortunately it couldn't, being mainly scribblings for his show spots and monologues — but it contained some gems of Dawsonian surrealism, such as: 'I came from a very poor neighbourhood. Petty theft was rife. It got to the stage where we had to brand the greenfly.' Continuing with the horticultural theme, Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet by Oliver Morton (Fourth Estate, £25) was a timely book. After 400 wide-ranging pages it was difficult to gainsay the author's conclusion that the best prospect for future energy generation is solar: 'new technologies that sit in the space between the photovoltaic cell and the leaf'.
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